So comedian Whoopi Goldberg will be hosting...

So comedian Whoopi Goldberg will be hosting the 74th annual Academy Awards on Sunday. Nothing against Goldberg (this will be her fourth time) or Billy Crystal (he’s done seven) or Steve Martin (last year’s host), but when was it decided that the most prestigious awards show on the planet needed to be funny in order to sustain an audience?

After all, it’s not as if comedy so dominates the nomination and awards process that only a professional comedian would have the necessary “street creds” to host the affair. Rarely does a comedy even earn a best picture nomination. Not counting the hybrid “Shakespeare in Love” (1998), the last comedy to win best picture was “Annie Hall,” way back in 1977.

And isn’t it slightly insulting for a program paying tribute to the movie industry (and formerly hosted by such luminaries as Frank Capra and Joseph Mankiewicz) to be co-opted by the likes of Johnny Carson and David Letterman, stand-up comedians associated exclusively with television? That’s sort of like baseball’s Hall of Fame inductions being handled by Green Bay quarterback Brett Favre.

I’m not suggesting we can’t have levity. I enjoy humor as much as the next guy. And I’m not saying that Bruce Vilanch and his fellow writers don’t do a splendid job of supplying the presenters with bushels of funny material. It’s just that scripted comedy seems a bit superfluous to the business at hand. If the show isn’t funny enough, what? We’re going to turn it off before we see who wins?

Beyond that, as the telecast becomes increasingly global (hundreds of millions of people are expected to tune in Sunday), one wonders whether topical or idiomatic humor will continue to play well. Last year, even though I laughed at Martin’s droll inside-Hollywood jokes, I couldn’t help wondering how those gags were being received in Bombay, India.

So, how did this modest trophy presentation, begun as a radio broadcast in 1926, evolve into the present-day joke-fest?

Two theories explain it. The first suggests that once audiences became conditioned to professional comedians as emcees, nobody was willing to deviate. If it worked, why monkey with it? No one wanted to be remembered as the guy who booked Max Von Sydow when he could have gotten Jerry Lewis (host of three shows).

But the Academy Awards weren’t always funny. Indeed, the early programs were modest, subdued affairs (Douglas Fairbanks and Cecil B. DeMille hosted the first one), almost parochial in tone. Arguably, it wasn’t until the 1940 debut of co-host Bob Hope that the Oscars shifted gears. During his record 15 radio and TV appearances (the last being in 1978), Hope single-handedly morphed the ceremony into an evening of self-effacing humor and wicked zingers.

Loath to tinker with proven success, subsequent producers (with few exceptions) have not only preserved that comedic format but sanctified it. Hence, Goldberg.

Call the second theory the “comicization” of America, the tendency to punctuate everything with frivolity: a clever quip, an ironic smirk, a snappy comeback. Call it the Dennis Miller Syndrome. Fearing that a simple sporting event was no longer sufficient to attract viewers, the producers of “Monday Night Football” felt obliged to place a stand-up comedian in the broadcast booth, alongside Al Michaels and Dan Fouts.

If the trend continues, one day we’ll see professional comedians at college commencements, portable laugh-track machines at the DMV, Gilbert Gottfried in Stockholm to “punch up” the Nobel Prize ceremony.

As a movie buff who attends about 60 films a year, I haven’t missed an Oscar telecast since 1983. Corny as it sounds, I’ve always regarded the occasion as part competition, part infatuation, an opportunity for us incurable movie romantics-archivists to immerse ourselves, for one glorious evening, in Hollywood’s legendary wretched excess.

I’m puzzled. All these movie stars, all the pageantry, suspense, surprises, disappointments, the speeches, the wonderful musical numbers, all this wall-to-wall industry royalty, and we still don’t have enough stimuli? We still need jokes off cue cards?

The academy should be urged to return to a more relaxed, dignified format. Make it a true awards presentation, and save the shtick for the comedy clubs. No, this doesn’t mean the host has to be Alan Greenspan. But what would the objection be to Anthony Hopkins?

David Macaray is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and playwright. He can be reached at dmac aray@earthlink.net.